THE president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) yesterday hit US President Donald Trump over his social media post showing an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-generated photo of himself as pope.
CBCP president Cardinal Pablo David said Trump’s post is not amusing, especially as it came “a few days after he attended the funeral of Pope Francis and while the Catholic world is still mourning.”
“With all due respect to his office and to the American people, we’d like him to know it’s not funny,” David said.
A former Italian prime minister has also blasted Trump for his post which came ahead of this week’s gathering of cardinals to choose a new leader of the 1.4-billion-strong Catholic Church, and just days after he joked he would “like to be pope.”
Trump, who is not a Catholic and does not attend church regularly, posted the image on his Truth Social platform late on Friday, less than a week after attending the funeral of Pope Francis, who died at 88 last month. The White House then reposted it on its official X account.
The image shows an unsmiling Trump seated in an ornate chair, dressed in white papal vestments and headdress, with right forefinger raised.
The irreverent posting drew instant outrage on X, including from Republicans against Trump, a group that describes itself as “pro-democracy conservative Republicans fighting Trump & Trumpism.” The group reposted the image, calling it “a blatant insult to Catholics and a mockery of their faith.”
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni declined to comment on the image during a briefing with journalists about the process of electing a new pope, which begins on May 7.
Former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi wrote on X: “This is an image that offends believers, insults institutions and shows that the leader of the global right enjoys being a clown. In the meantime, the American economy risks recession and the dollar loses value.”
The Catholic bishops of New York state also expressed their displeasure on X.
“There is nothing clever or funny about this image, Mr. President,” they wrote. “We just buried our beloved Pope Francis and the cardinals are about to enter a solemn conclave to elect a new successor of St. Peter. Do not mock us.”
Trump on Tuesday had jokingly said he would be his own first choice to become pope, before adding that there was a “very good” candidate in New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
Dolan, the archbishop of New York, is not on the shortlist of possible contenders for the top spot, but it does include another American, Cardinal Joseph Tobin, archbishop of Newark, New Jersey. There has never been a pope from the United States.
In mid-February, both Trump and the official White House social media accounts posted a different AI-generated image of the president wearing a crown and captioned “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”
In West Palm Beach, Debbie Macchia, 60, stood waiting with a dozen other supporters as Trump’s motorcade arrived at his golf club on Saturday morning.
